Lindberghiana

One day last week Charles Augustus Lindbergh telephoned the State Department in Washington and said that Undersecretary Castle might announce that Col. Lindbergh and wife would soon fly to the Orient--"if the press was interested." The press was interested and scampered, hundred-legged, after the Lindberghs. Publicity-wise cities on the Pacific coast --San Francisco, Seattle, Ketchikan, Alaska--employed the telegraph to urge their airports upon the flyer as the "logical jumping-off point" for his flight. The known facts:

The Lindberghs desire to visit Japan and parts of China, "just for the visit." They propose to travel the whole distance by easy stages from New York and return in their Lockheed-Sirius, the low-wing monoplane in which they made a transcontinental speed flight last year. At North Beach Airport, N. J. last week the landing wheels of the plane were replaced by pontoons to permit frequent landings for respite and refuelling.--

The route to be taken was undetermined --even the direction was undecided. The Lindberghs might fly east from New York across the Arctic Circle via Labrador, Greenland and Spitsbergen to Peiping, a course that would take them only 850 mi. from the North Pole. Or they might fly west across northern U. S. or Canada (where water stops are plentiful) to Seattle. British Columbia or Alaska, thence to bear along the Aleutian Islands, the southmost tip of Kamchatka, Siberia and across the stepping stones of the Kurile Islands to Japan.

Neither route is totally virginal to aircraft; and neither is without hazard. In 1924 the famed U. S. Army round-world flyers fought fog, wind and snow along the Alaska-Aleutian route (that was in May). Five years later the Russian plane Land of the Soviets crossed eastward from Siberia to Alaska. Last month little Seiji ("Kite Crazy") Yoshihara, armed with Japanese goodwill to President Hoover, flew a small Junkers seaplane from Tokyo as far as Shana in the Kuriles. There his ship was so badly buffeted that he temporarily abandoned the flight, returned to Tokyo for a new plane.

On the eastern route. Greenland has been attained by planes from North America or Europe three times before. Spitsbergen figured importantly in the Arctic flights of Wilkins, Byrd, Amundsen. But no plane has yet blazed a trail thence into the Orient. Greatest danger on either route: fog. The Lindbergh plane is radio-equipped. Mrs. Lindbergh, who qualified for a private pilot's license last fortnight, will share the controls.

Meticulously Col. Lindbergh repeated over and over again last week that his proposed journey was nothing but a pleasure trip; he sought no record, would bear no diplomatic tiding. He had confided in the State Department only to obtain permission for flying over foreign lands. But whether he wills it or no, it became evident that the flyer cannot escape good-willing. Inevitably, his flight must have significance. The Philippine Tourist Association cabled: "Commercial aviation in the Philippines desperately needs stimulation. Come help us." Chinese aviation interests saw a "great step" toward establishment of trans-Pacific commercial air routes. Japanese newspapers banzaied with joy. The Tokyo Hochi Shimbun, backer of luckless Seiji, promised to send him soon with a new plane on a return visit.

The announcement of the flight came just a week after the Saturday Evening Post undertook to bring the public up-to-date on its Lindbergh, with an article by Donald E. Keyhoe, his longtime friend and biographer. Col. Lindbergh was quoted as saying of his wife: "She is a better navigator than I am. She watches the map carefully while I have a habit of wandering around. . . . She could make a solo transcontinental flight right now."

Other Lindberghiana:

While he "hasn't had much trouble lately," he still dares not pause in the city streets lest he attract a crowd of gawpers.

He and his wife cannot dine in public nor attend theatres save in a disguise not described by Author Keyhoe.

He has not read a book of fiction since before his Paris flight.

Last year he put more money into commercial aviation than he took out in salaries.

On four days each week he motors 112 mi. round-trip between his Princeton, N. J. home and his Manhattan office.

He is "moderately fond of radio music'' but prefers a waltz in "pleasantly slow rhythm" to "something in modern tempo, a staccato piece without much melody."

--Just as Col. Lindbergh climbed into the ship with his wife to flight-test it last week a process server handed him a summons in a suit by a press-clipping bureau. Lindbergh accepted it, but after he had taken off an unknown Lindbergh-admirer felled the strutting server with a punch to the jaw.

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